Pages

Thursday, October 15, 2015

We're Celebrating Two Years Of Spreading The Biscuit Love

I've spent the past hour contemplating how to begin this blog post. I paced. Washed a few dishes. Straightened up the living room. Picked up the chew bones and toys left on the floor from the fur-kids. I folded their blankets. Made a cup of coffee. Ate a handful of Skittles. Went through my notes and lists o' stuff to do.

Sigh.

So, here it is. Today is the day. Two years of spreading the biscuit love. It's as simple as that. Or, not so simple. Right now, as I type this, I'm surrounded by boxes in our home office. The biscuit room is loaded with boxes. There's a path to the biscuit table. The piles will get higher today and tomorrow with boxes loaded with items for our Bodacious Yard & Bake Sale...an event to commemorate two years of spreading the biscuit love and to raise funds for holiday biscuit love.

I wanted to create a stunning slide show to display on our Bodacious Biscuit Love Facebook page for today. Or maybe a movie-type presentation. Something. Last year I created a photo collage. This year I wanted to do better. However, between baking biscuits, delivering biscuit love and pet food to several animal shelters, packaging and preparing for our event, that didn't happen.

And, that's okay. I'd rather squeeze in a delivery of pet food to a shelter in need and biscuit love to the sweet shelter pups than sit at my desk creating a slide show.
Yep. Two years of spreading biscuit love. It's been an incredible journey of ups and downs. Twists and turns. Challenges. Trials and tribulations. Tears. Excitement. Stress. Sleep deprivation. Joy. The list goes on. It's a gigantic melting pot of stuff that has, and continues to, motivate us to continue and expand our mission.

I think back to just shy of five years ago. Lisa and I had endless conversations about places we wanted to travel to. Maybe take a cruise. The possibility of having a "hooman" baby came up in conversation once or twice. I was making my way up the corporate ladder. Working over 100 hours a week for many clients. I wanted to be known. To be great. A six-figure income.

Slowly, our path veered this way and that. We started volunteering. Getting involved in rescue efforts. Our tribe that surrounded us became more populated with people who shared the same interest. Rescue. Fostering. Animal lovers and advocates. The voice of the voiceless. Trainers.

Then, we adopted Coco...a very sick pup who needed a home. A family. Love. Life changed. We changed. The following year, we started experimenting with biscuit dough. One thing led to another (you can read all about that here). Bodacious Biscuit Love was born in October of 2013.

In the very beginning, we were going to bake biscuits and donate them to our local animal shelters. That's it. A hobby at most. While this is the bulk of what we do, our mission has expanded. A lot.And, it happened quickly. We didn't just test the waters. We dove right in.Why?

Something happens when you visit animal shelters. Spend time with the pound pups. Get to know the Animal Control Officers and animal shelter staff. Hear the stories. Hand out biscuits to the pups who are excited to see you. Look into the eyes of pups who have been abandoned, suffered horrendous abuse and have been neglected. You don't leave the animal shelter the same person you were when you arrived.

We stopped talking about traveling the world and boarding a cruise ship. Enjoying the view from the top of the corporate ladder no longer appealed to me. Working over 100 hours a week, striving for that six-figure income, seemed more and more like a waste of time. The occasional conversations about "hooman" babies halted.

We basically ripped up our bucket list.

Now, here it is, two years later. We have three amazing rescue fur-kids. Two of our fur-kids were originally fosters and had everything to do with Bodacious Biscuit Love and crossing paths with some incredible "hoomans." I still work over 100 hours a week, but very little of that has to do with clients, a six-figure income, and contributing to someone else's success. No cruises. We haven't traveled. In fact, we don't do much away from home.

Our lives revolve around our fur-kids, our mission, our Bodacious Community. Aside from baking biscuits, we launch fundraisers so we can purchase much needed items for our local animal shelters, provide Bodacious Raffle Baskets for fundraising events hosted by rescue organizations and local animal shelters, host 2 Bodacious Yard & Bake Sales a year, participate in events most weekends during the late spring and summer, venture out on biscuit love runs to shelters we normally ship to because of distance, spend time at our local shelters helping out and visiting the animals, occasionally coordinate emergency rescues and transports and collect pet food and supply donations to transport to local animal shelters.

It's not just a hobby. It's our life.

Two years. Today. How do you capture all of that in its entirety with a slide show or photo collage? You can't. Confetti and balloons won't fall from the ceiling as we celebrate this Bodacious milestone. It's more about giving thanks to our Bodacious Community who make it possible for us to do what we do. You and you and you. It's a community effort. It's about celebrating the pups we've spread biscuit love to and shelters we've stocked with food and supplies. The many successful fundraisers. The events we've participated in. The people we've met and connected with along the way. All of it.

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.
We are looking forward to our Bodacious Yard & Bake Sale on Saturday. While it's a lot of work and involves weeks of preparation, it's time well spent. It's a day where we invite everyone from our Bodacious Community and beyond to visit. Say hello. Celebrate with us. We love meeting new faces and seeing those we're already familiar with. Last year we had a blast and we're hoping for the same this year. We couldn't think of a better way to celebrate.

Looking ahead for year number three, we've got a lot of things happening. Our Bodacious Blanket, Bandanna and Tote Love is coming along...slowly. We've got a ton of squares cut out. More donations of fabric and sewing supplies have rolled in. Now that event season is over with, and winter is right around the corner, we'll rev up the sewing machine and start piecing the squares together. By spring, we should have piles of blankets, bandannas and totes.

By this time next year, our goal is to visit all of the animal shelters here in Connecticut. To date, we have visited quite a few, but not all. Yet. We'd like to expand the amount of shelters we ship biscuits to and the frequency in which we do so. In order for that to happen, we are hoping to set up additional biscuit displays and participate in a few more events next year. I know we can do this. Our Bodacious Community is growing and the effort put forth by all of you is awesome. We are grateful for that every single day.

We raise our coffee cups. Two years. Today. We're proud of that. We're even prouder of our Bodacious Community.